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TM's and HM's in Writing

I started work ona fic a year ago, but then stopped once school started getting busy. However I stumbled upon it again last night, and I was impressed with myself and found it quite interesting. So I've decided to start it up again. However, there's one slight problem with what I'd written up to that point...

Hidden Machines.

The reason it is there is because the main character meets this other character who needs to get to a certain underwater cave, but he can't because none of his Pokemon know the move Dive. So the main character, who has the HM, agrees to let him use it as long as the other character takes the main character with him. This gets the ball rolling with the story.

Now I was reading back over it, and it seemed a bit funky to me. The way I have the HM being used is that it's like a CD but thicker and with a few buttons on top, and, like in the little animations in FireRed and LeafGreen, the device is put onto the Pokemon's head, it glows, and the Pokemon learns the move.

That just seems a bit weird to me, especially with a move like Dive, which simply means that the Pokemon swims underwater (which it should already be able to do). Then that causes problems because they don't know the move Surf, so how are they even swimming at all?

Do you have any suggestions for this? Should I keep it with the HM or devise some other reason that the other character needs the main character's help? Thanks!

I hope I'm answering this correctly but I am also working with TMs and HMs as well. I say that a Pokemon must know surf in order to dive because as you said, how are you going to swim? Most water types can learn surf so there's no problem but fewer know dive at the same time. So I'd get a Pokemon who knows both moves and go with it. Or get a character to teach the Pokemon they have surf.

Spoiler:- also...:

now that you mention TMS and HMS, I'll give an example on how I usually handle them and such:

The Poke Dude then gets out his bag and pulls out a black CD case with a red Poke ball design on it. When he opens his case, he takes out an item that resembles a Pokedex; however it was bigger and had a CD slot on the side. It also had a small screen on the front in buttons on the bottom.

“Okay, let’s say that you want to teach your Pokemon the move flash,” the black haired man started to explain while taking a Poke ball from his bag. “First thing you do is take out the TM for flash which is TM70 from your TM case. Then you take the Attackdex and you insert the CD of your choice into the CD drive which is on the left side of the Attackdex. Every TM case comes with an Attackdex.”

The Poke Dude then inserts the CD inside the Attackdex. Once he did that, the screen started to light up as a dim light started to flash on the back of the dex. He held his Pokeball up to the light as he pressed a few buttons and the light began to blink.

“This can be done with your Pokemon in or out of its Poke ball. In this case, I’m doing it with a Poke ball. After you insert the CD, a light will come on in the back. Shine that light on your Pokemon and press the select button on the bottom. Once it asks you if you want to delete a move for the move you are about to teach it, press select. Shine the light for five seconds and POOF! The move is taught to your Pokemon! And there you have it! As a quick note, HMs can’t be deleted using the Attackdex. But that’s for another mini lesson on the topic. Also TMs can be used over and over again.

but since you are working with FR/LG, yeaah the head device might be more fitting

It depends on how you think about HMs. The way I tend to think about HMs, Surf isn't literally the only way a Pokémon can swim, or Fly the only way it can fly, or Dive the only way it can go underwater - the HMs just enable Pokémon to transport humans with them more easily. So while your Charizard could fly you places without knowing Fly, the HM would give it extra carrying capacity and endurance, allowing it to fly you long distances in a way that it couldn't otherwise - and a Pidgey, which couldn't fly you anywhere at all without the HM, would be able to lift your weight if it knows Fly.

I would imagine Surf and Dive working similarly - the Pokémon can swim or dive on its own just fine, but the HMs give an extra boost that allows them to carry humans. Maybe you could even interpret Dive as, say, forming a bubble of air on the Pokémon's back that allows the trainer to breathe while the Pokémon takes them underwater.

As for how TMs/HMs are used, the Pokémon universe has a lot of sufficiently advanced technology - if you say that putting a little device on a Pokémon's head and pressing a button uploads a new move into their brain, readers will probably go with it just fine, especially since that's how it was portrayed in a game. Others interpret it differently - for example, the CD actually contains instructional videos that the trainer would have to have the Pokémon watch to teach it the move, or something like that.

The Final Stretch - Chapter 72: Rick
The story of an ordinary boy on an impossible quest in a world that isn't as black and white as he always thought it was.(rough draft of the remaining chapters finished for NaNoWriMo; to be edited and posted)

Morphic(completed, plus silly extras)
A few scientists get drunk and start fiddling with gene splicing. Ten years later, they're taking care of eight half-Pokémon kids, each freakier than the next, while a religious fanatic plots to murder them all.